July 5, 2012

"I feel like Mitt's got the answers to turn this country around," she continued. "He's the one that's got to bring back hope for this country, which is what they ran on last time. But the truth is, this is the one that has the hope for the - for America."

I was going to say: That's all very well put; Ann's a fine communicator; but she shouldn't have said "kill"; it's not the right way to talk in the context of presidential politics.

But then I saw:

In August, some Democratic strategists let leak to the press that Obama's top aides were looking at a massive character takedown of Romney in light of a deterring economy; "kill Romney" was a phrase used by one. "That was their memo that came out from their campaign," Ann Romney said. "And it's like, 'not when I'm next to him you better not."

Perfect! She got our attention by saying "kill," but it was their word, spoken a year ago. Who remembered? We remember now.

Huh. I had missed that about killing Romney. Well, good thing I know now that, if Romney wins, depicting violence against the president will be in again. Maybe someone will write the screenplay for Death of a President 2: Electric Boogaloo."

Romney will just serve his clients instead of the Liberal ones. He will spend lots of money. He will continue, and escalate, the wars, which will cost $$$. He will continue eroding civil liberties and, above all, continue building the Federal government bigger and bigger and bigger.

An original A-hole proclaimed: Just because Team Obama is bad, don't mean that Romney is good...

The facts argue that someone on team Obama is pretty bad. It should less of an elastic stretch for the writer/commenter to conclude that Obama is bad, surrounded by bad, especially since nothing was said or done by O about this.

That is the Journolisters main skill. By running a tsunami of agreed story lines ( totally false and made up ones) about a person, the public accepts that as their idea too since its so popular.

To beat that type of attack, a politicia has to create their own connection with the public that interests them. One cannot sit back and wait for strangers to already know you...they don't and they wont until you connect with them emotionally.

Ann connects everytime she walks into the room. Mitt must latch on to that skill and keep it going. He cannot be too proud to make the effort like many rich GOP guys.

Did someone at CBS really write "in light of a deterring economy"? Theoretically, the author might be trying to say that the state of the economy deters Obama from one line of attack on Romney, but it's a lot more likely that the author just doesn't know the difference between 'deter' and 'deteriorate'. What are they teaching in Journalism schools these days?

Jan Crawford is a liberal Democrat shill working for a liberal Democrat network.

Which you can tell by the subtle way she slips in that bit about allegedly hiding money overseas. Well, I guess I shouldn't say "allegedly", as that's not even an allegation, it's a flat-out lie. The funny thing is, the Romneys really are Caesar's Wife when it comes to financial disclosure, and yet we're getting this battery of articles trying to pretend that Mitt is a latter-day Lyndon Johnson or something like that.

What is this "left" so many here and at other conservative blogs continually refer to? Surely no one can be dim enough to confuse the Democratic Party with any sort of "left wing" or even faintly "left" ideas. And there surely is no other institutional “left” in this country at present.

It seems many who support and mistake the Republicans as having the interests of the American people at heart or as being anything other than what the Democrats are--paid factota of Wall Street--are afflicted with a sort of political Tourette's syndrome: when discussing the supposed opposition party, without conscious volition, they reflexively blurt unconsidered terms such as "leftist" to describe them and their purportedly radically different ideas and function within government. One might as well utter “Boogie! Boogie!” when referring to the Democrats for all the relation the term bears to any manifest reality.

Perhaps the (only) distinguishable difference between many Republicans and Democrats is that the former seem to actually believe the tripe that is written for them to say and engage in their duties with not only servility but alacrity, while the former may understand they're simply doing a job they're paid to do by their paymasters, and thus may (dimly) know they're only whores like all the rest, (to use a term that was the title of a book by R. Meltzer).

As "God" points out, "the lesser of two evils is still evil." The dispute here seems only to be who is the lesser evil. It's a trick question: they're the same!

Nice post. Glad you wrote it, Althouse.I'm going through my usual morning briefings on the Net. First, I look at Drudge. There, was a news report from CBS on the Ann Romney story. I had the same take as you. How can she say "kill"? I skimmed the piece to learn if she thought it would be by poison, by gun, by knife or by a car. Nada.Then, I visited Instapundit. Interesting that the same subject was linked there. I moused over the title and found it was a link to Althouse. And here I am.Yes, I actually DO now remember that the Obama team had used the word "kill".Thanks for jogging that memory, rightwing internet bloggers and aggregates. I pity the fools who only get their news from conventional media.

Speaking of an all woman assasination squad, my wife and I joke all the time about Billy O',and his bevy of blonde beauties he has for commentators, with the prize being Gretchen Carlson. I kinda think he has a thing for the Third Reich :-0

All the little journolistas want to save the world,not report the news.

P.j.O'rourke. Funny as only a drunken Irishman can be. HE is what should be taught in Poli-Sci.

Romney will just serve his clients instead of the Liberal ones. He will spend lots of money. He will continue, and escalate, the wars, which will cost $$$. He will continue eroding civil liberties and, above all, continue building the Federal government bigger and bigger and bigger.

It's nearly a century old script pioneered by the russian and jewish bolsheviks and used again and again by the Left, with Stalinist, Alinskyite, Marcusean, and New Left media variants. Or by non-Left tolitarians like the Fascists that followed the Bolshevik script religiously in their own right.

Demonize the foe (Romney), question motive, mock the foe, demand apology, play all class and gender and race cards available. Enlist academia and propaganda organs in killing the enemy.

Which you can tell by the subtle way she slips in that bit about allegedly hiding money overseas. Well, I guess I shouldn't say "allegedly", as that's not even an allegation, it's a flat-out lie. The funny thing is, the Romneys really are Caesar's Wife when it comes to financial disclosure, and yet we're getting this battery of articles trying to pretend that Mitt is a latter-day Lyndon Johnson or something like that.

Yet the media had zero issues with Obama's site turning off verification software on their donations page that, by default, is always on.

That isn't an issue.

Romney completely following the law? That has to be a crime or something.

For a page on how to "kill" a candidate one only has to look at the Romney attack ads against Gingrich. Both sides sling shit, period.

Shove your false equivalency bullshit. Romney's people didn't say they want to "kill" Obama (or any Republican rival). That was Obama's people about Romney.

This is the Obama Administration..... Delivered from Chicago. Did we forget this? You know, the whole Daley machine that spitted out corruption on a daily basis at the time? Not that Rahm is an angel either.

This is the Obama Administration..... Delivered from Chicago. Did we forget this? You know, the whole Daley machine that spitted out corruption on a daily basis at the time? Not that Rahm is an angel either.

Having the lesser of two evils makes it a little easier for the rest of us to do what needs to be done: take back our responsibility/authority/resources and put government back into its limited role of securing our rights.

Think Andropov vs. Gorbachev ... both were Communists, but the latter was the lesser evil, and his presence enabled the removal of the Iron Curtain.

The "rich" have the power to exploit us ONLY if they can collude with government to leverage the force of law to their advantage ... otherwise, we can walk away and find someone else to do business with (and that includes doing business with them by becoming their employee).

Returning government to the limits it was designed to have, inherently limits their power ... not only the "rich" and corporations, but the unions and activist groups that are just as corrosive to our freedom as Wall Street.

Of course, limited government means less free stuff for you ... and you may be inclined to take the free stuff, because you have been conditioned by almost a century of Progressive pontificating to believe that you CAN'T get ahead without the "help" of the allegedly Best and Brightest.

But to continue to take it, is to trade your right to get ahead for a few baubles.

Forgetting that an Obama campaign staffer said, "let's kill this guy" reflects the same moral blind spot that led so many people to vote for Mr. Obama in the first place. The staffer's comment is part and parcel of associates of a man who pals around with terrorists, racists and jihadists.

You were warned then who Obama is. If the warning sirens aren't screaming in your head by now, you have real issues with logical thinking.

"It seems many who support and mistake the Republicans as having the interests of the American people at heart or as being anything other than what the Democrats are--paid factota of Wall Street--are afflicted with a sort of political Tourette's syndrome: when discussing the supposed opposition party, without conscious volition, they reflexively blurt unconsidered terms such as "leftist" to describe them"

You obviously haven't been paying attention since 1972. The Democratic Party, which used to represent the workingman, made a sharp turn and now represents government employee unions, trial lawyers and college professors. I doubt you could find a more left wing group. They know no economics, rely on rent seeking and constantly blather about "social justice."

Perfect! She got our attention by saying "kill," but it was their word, spoken a year ago. Who remembered? We remember now.

I think this kind of thing should be part of their strategy. On Youtube I see a lot of political ads both from Romney and Obama. The best one from Romney, I think, has been one whose audio is just Obama talking about how running up a huge public debt is "unpatriotic." There's text on the screen that makes an overt point about how Obama has increased the debt, blah blah blah, but I think the audio carries the real message -- to remind the audience that Obama is the kind of politician who calls his opponents "unpatriotic".

Romney's biggest disadvantage against Obama is likeability, but Obama has done and said all kinds of unpleasant things. None of that would work if the Romney campaign just strung a bunch of clips together of Obama calling his opponents "Un-American" and so on -- it would be too obvious. But the "Unpatriotic" ad uses the criticism of the huge Obama deficits to slip in something that is much, much more effective.

So you're comparing "Killing Romney" at any cost to swiftboating which was a valid question against John Kerry? The Willie Horton example is absurd of you to bring up as other people pointed out that it was bad policy. You know who almost could have been Willie Horton'ed going back to 2008? Huckabee. He released that man, Maurice Clemmons, who ended up killing 4 police officers in Lakewood Washington all because he supposedly found God.

Yeah, because Republicans never do that...swiftboating and the Willie Horton ad were all about issues...

They very much were about issues (and Horton was brought up by Gore). Dukakis wanted to stand by his record of being tough on crime in MA. Kerry wanted to run on him being a soldier, briefly, in the 1970's.

I think you're partly wrong. While Kerry didn't do anything that was "technically" unpatriotic he was quick to take advantage of a rule that 3 wounds in (I forget the time period) allowed himself to elect to be taken off combat status. As these wounds could be characterized as "superficial" AT BEST and as one was self-inflicted (tho accidently) not only did most his fellow contemporaries feel he "gamed" the system in a, shall we say. "less than courageous" way in order to get himself out of the line of fire, most other combat veterans did also. By contrast, a contemporary of Kerry's, Ollie North turned down several purple hearts just so he wouldn't be taken off the line..

The problem is obama is surrounded by liberal "tough guys" who speak with a lisp and desperately want to compensate with this kind of nonsense.

It's not just his staff. The President is also one of those yuppies who engages in the occasional cartoonishly thuggish utterance, e.g. “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.” Nothing quite as over-the-top as Rahm Emanuel's famous "I have my knee on their vertebrae, and I'm not going to let up until I hear the vertebrae snap," but Obama is a much greyer figure than Emanuel.

Maybe its just me but I can't understand this. Obama comes off as a preening narcissist and his behavior over the last 3 1/2 years has only solidified my opinion.

Look, that's what the polls say. I suspect some poll respondents may be using the likeability questions to salve their own consciences over thinking the first Black president has done kind of a crap job ("I'm not a racist! Yeah, maybe I think he's a screw-up but I like him"), but that doesn't change the fact that he's broadly seen as likeable.

While incumbency is one thing due to name recognition, but in this Presidential election, the name recognition advantage is non-existent in presidential elections. However based on historical evidence, undecided's have traditionally voted heavily towards the other person.

"Team Obama's storm troopers have evolved from 'my side is better than your's" to "both sides are equally bad.'

"So I guess its just about personalities now."

I don't know who you're referring to here as being part of "Team Obama," as I don't see any Obama partisans commenting, but, no, it's not about personalities, except insofar as personalities may influence policy. Obama is as bad as Bush, or worse, and continues his predecessor's policies. (Clinton doesn't escape inclusion in the Hall of Shame for Living Presidents.)

Should Romney become President, he will continue Obama's policies, and will further the dismantling begun 30 years ago of whatever faintly equitable and prosperous society we once briefly had.

Either party's candidate will service the financial elites--let's be frank and call them what they are, the ruling class--and thus we will find no relief from our present wretched state of affairs in a second Obama term or a first Romney term

That's bullshit, David (whether you're a moby or not). Obama's life story has nothing to do with "the ghetto"; he was never authentically part of "the ghetto"; his only involvement with it later in life was as the budding politician "community organizer."

Obama's fondness for violent political rhetoric doubtless has more to do with the influence of white leftist radical chic (Ayers et al). "Tough guy" language learned from leftist activists and intellectuals, not the ghetto.

Of course if someone does assassinate Romney, Obama will declare an emergency, and issue an executive order requiring everyone to turn in their guns.

Just like when BATFE was caught directing the transfer of guns to a drug cartel, his solution was to 1) Lie to Congress about it, 2)Recommend legislation to restrict honest people from having guns and 3) invoke executive privilege to prevent the American people from knowing how it was decided that guns should be transferred to the drug cartel, and for what purpose.

Surely no one can be dim enough to confuse the Democratic Party with any sort of "left wing" or even faintly "left" ideas.

Ah, Robert, that's all that's left of the Democrats are left wing extremists. That you are to the left of them says lots about you, don't you think?

This administration is the farthest to the left of any administration since Lincoln;s (emancipation being a far left wing policy at that time). That left-wing policies have been a dismal failure, is self-evident. In the past the American economy has been strong enough to succeed despite the best efforts of Democrats. But this time you're out of luck. To you, the problem is that Obama hasn't gone far enough, as though some miracle will occur if only he would throw more money at things. To the rest of us, he's gone way too far and we'll be decades recovering from the left wing lunatic fringe.

No, Big Mike, to the degree you believe any of this silly stuff you write, it reveals either how far to the extreme right you are, or how gullible you are to the nonsense promulgated by others about the Dems.